The ability for a user to purchase and print a Value Bearing Indicia at a home or business has been available for a number of years. VBI is indicia attached to, printed on, or otherwise evidenced on a ticket, voucher, envelope, letter, shipping label, parcel, package, container, box, or postcard which evidences proof of payment for a service. A VBI could be either a full VBI or a VBI lite (also known as a reduced VBI). The information encoded into full VBI has typically included sufficient information to authenticate an indicium from information on the face on the postal item. In contrast, a VBI lite includes less information that a full VBI but should include enough data to allow for association of the VBI lite with the full data typically needed to form a full VBI.
Initially, postage meters using tamper resistant mechanical postage value “vaults” were widely used for printing postage indicia commonly referred to as meter stamps. In more recent years, electronic systems were developed using electronic postage value vaults to provide improved security. The evolution of such electronic systems has ultimately led to the development of postage metering systems which allow general purpose processor based systems (e.g. personal computers) to access remote metering servers using communications such as the public switched telephone network (PSTN), local area networks (LANs), wide area networks (WANs), and the Internet. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,249,777 entitled “System and Method for Remote Postage Metering,” U.S. Pat. No. 6,671,813 entitled “Secure On-Line PC Postage Metering System,” and U.S. Pat. No. 7,149,726 entitled “Online Value Based Item Printing,” the disclosures of which are incorporated herein by reference, show various electronic VBI metering systems facilitating remote metering operations.
In providing remote metering operations, electronic metering systems typically implement specialized metering technology both at the user site and the remote site (e.g., a centralized metering site). When a user printed postage indicia from a general purpose processor, specialized metering technology in the form of secure postage metering hardware and/or secure metering software had to be installed on the general purpose processor to deter fraud, prevent value theft, and provide for precise printing. When compared to the original mechanical metering systems, the secure metering hardware and/or software installed on a user computer made the printing of postage indicia more available and user friendly for the common user. However, requiring a user to acquire and install specialized metering hardware and/or software technology may introduce disadvantages, such as increased costs, reduced availability, and limited system use.
For example, the specialized hardware and/or software may require purchase of hardware and/or software supporting technology which increases costs to either the VBI purchaser or VBI provider. Further, the hardware and/or software may malfunction during the installation process or later when in use. Once the hardware and/or software are properly installed, the purchaser and provider are further inconvenienced by having to maintain software updates. Moreover, every time user computers are changed or reformatted the specialized hardware and/or software may need to be reinstalled. In a business setting, the need to keep up with the installations, updates, and reinstallations may overburden the business' Information Technology (IT) department. Such disadvantages in the current methods used in online postage indicia purchasing may deter users from using online VBI purchasing services.
Although the current state of technology provides for the use of a general purpose interface application, such as a web browser application (e.g., INTERNET EXPLORER™ available from Microsoft Corporation, NETSCAPE™ available from Netscape Communications, SAFARI™ available from Apple Inc., and FIREFOX™ available from Mozilla Corporation) in various computer based networking operations, the open nature of such general purpose interface applications do not provide the high level of security desired for metering operations. For instance, because general purpose interface applications generally facilitate user freedom with respect to printing, copying, print margin setting, etcetera, even the most casual user could defraud the VBI provider by purchasing a single VBI and using the open nature of a general purpose interface application to copy and/or print the same VBI multiple times.
For example, a casual user could use the print menu (e.g., FILE|PRINT) typically available in general purpose interface applications in order to print multiple copies of VBI acquired using such general purpose interface applications. Similarly, the user could manipulate a pointing device (e.g., mouse) in order to select and copy VBI for pasting into another software application for duplicating, modification, storing, etc. Traditionally, general purpose interface applications do not provide means by which the VBI provider can control the user's activities once the VBI is sent to the user's general purpose interface application. It is due to this lack of control that VBI providers traditionally desire specialized software be installed on the user's computer.
Another problem general purpose interface applications cause when printing VBI is misprints. When printing VBI on a sheet of labels, the proper placement of each printed VBI is essential. For example, when printing a plurality of VBI on a sheet of labels holding multiple kiss cut labels, the printer must precisely print each indicium such that no indicium overlaps into a neighboring label. Otherwise, when the labels are removed from the sheet, an indicium would be torn into pieces because it was printed across more than one label. Likewise, when printing VBI directly onto an envelope or postcard, the printer should print the indicium in the upper right hand corner of the envelope or postcard, or else, the VBI may not be acceptable.
Traditionally, general purpose interface applications (e.g. web browsers) have not given the VBI provider control over the printing location to a precise enough degree to ensure the VBI will be printed in the proper location. This is because general purpose interface applications insert headers, footers, or placement parameters when printing which may affect the printing location of the item being printed. To maintain the desired printing precision, postage metering systems generally have not employed general purpose interface applications, but instead, utilize specialized metering software and/or hardware to control the printing and provide location controls for accurate VBI printing.
More recently, printing simple shipping labels without VBI has been possible through a general purpose interface application via a web page. However, VBI is quite different from shipping labels without VBI, and it is those differences that traditionally prevented general purpose interfacing applications from being used to print VBI in the past.
One reason users have been able to print shipping labels without VBI using general purpose interface applications is the lenient printing constraints required for shipping label forms. Typically, a shipping label without VBI form is simply a 4″×6″ rectangle printed anywhere on a piece of plain paper. Positioning is not important. If the browser cannot precisely position the shipping label on the page or includes its own headers and footers, the shipping label is still usable. In contrast to shipping labels without VBI, VBI benefit from precise printing locations. Users desire VBI be printed on envelopes, postcards, and sheets of labels which as described above, benefit from precise printing. Because general purpose interface applications have generally not been able to precisely print VBI, general purpose interface applications have not been used in printing VBI.
Further, shipping labels without VBI differ from VBI because there is no need to control the number of times a shipping label is printed or copied. Shipping labels without VBI often include billing numbers ensuring that each time a shipping label bearing that particular billing number is used the user is billed for the use of the shipping label. Therefore, service providers need not restrict the copying or duplicative printing of shipping labels because the user will be charged for each duplicative use. While the parcel is in transit, the shipping carrier scans 100% of the shipping labels to determine from the label's billing number whether the label has previously been used. If so, duplication and/or fraud are detected and the carrier can choose not to ship the parcels. Different from shipping labels without VBI, VBI may not be 100% scanned by the shipping carriers. Therefore, VBI usually lack the after-printing fraud detection available on shipping labels. Accordingly, stricter pre-printing security is desired to ensure the VBI are not printed more then once or copied into another application, and general purpose interface applications have traditionally not been capable of providing the desired pre-printing security.
Moreover, shipping labels without VBI are typically much larger than VBI. A typical shipping label is a 4″×6,″ and shipping label providers typically rely on this large size to provide necessary security features. The shipping label's large size provides the room needed for fraud detection features provided on the label itself. For example, within the four corners of the shipping label is usually included the billing number described above, address information, insurance information, delivery confirmation information, among other information which is scannable and/or human readable. The compilation of all this information is used in after-printing fraud detection. Because the shipping label has a large enough surface area to include a large amount of information, after-printing fraud detection is easier and pre-printing security less is important. Granted, shipping labels' large size provide the advantage of after-printing security detecting; however, the large size generally prevents shipping labels from being printed on envelopes, postcards, and small labels. Therefore, a disadvantage of shipping labels without VBI is that they cannot easily be used to mail postcards, letters, cards, and other smaller mail pieces because the large amount of information typically required for shipping labels cannot fit within the surface area of a smaller mail piece.
In contrast to shipping labels without VBI, VBI are much smaller in size. VBI are traditionally small enough to fit easily onto an envelope or postcard. Due to this small size, there is less surface space within a VBI to include post-printing security features in the VBI itself as compared to traditional shipping labels. For example, a user may desire to print VBI that does not have enough room to include billing numbers, address information, insurance information, delivery confirmation information within the four corners of the indicia. Therefore, providing pre-printing security is often very important when printing VBI. It is the need for this pre-printing security which has traditionally prevented the use of general purpose interface applications for printing VBI.